Killers of Different Gods
by LostCompass
Summary: Samus Aran, hunter of hunters, traitor to humanity, wanted dead or alive by the Federation. There are those who would aspire, if only fleetingly, to have their eyes darkened by her long shadow. Others will have their eyes darkened in a hundred other ways, their eyes cast down. Corporal Skótos looks up, and stars avert their gaze.
1. At the Edge of the Water

Corporal Dérkomai Skótos jacks in.

She has replayed the combat footage over and over again. And again. And over again. Her cervical neuroport is inflamed from jacking in time after time after time, the surrounding flesh hot to the touch. Her cerebellum feels heavy in her sleep, her amygdala murmurs, but she doesn't care. Beaming in the recordings just isn't as good. She dreams them, now; she's the observer watching as mining outposts, colonies, trading vessels are torn asunder.

They appear, they attack, they disappear. They are so precise their movements almost become mundane, if not for the carnage that blooms in the wake of their strikeships.

Somnifugae venatoris sapiens. Adequate name, albeit somewhat sensationalized. The scientists of the Federation have yet to come to a consensus regarding taxonomy, and it's hard to blame them—no two Somnifugae specimens are alike. Not really. Polymorphism, genetic engineering-who could say? They don't leave much for the coroners to study. When a Fugue flatlines, an implanted capsule of acid detonates within the mesothorax. Chitin and and corroded metal and denatured protein is all that remains-woe to the one within the blast radius.

She reads about K-2L often. How some fought, some surrendered—and were slaughtered and butchered for their effort. Absurd. You don't negotiate with tectonics or tides or time.

She likes to think that, even were she young (well, younger) and not the military-moulded woman she is now, she would have intervened. Not just stood there like chattel to be slaughtered, or flee screaming like a coward only to catch a photon dart in the back. She would've stood and fought and died, and she would've taken a fistful of them with her.

That is what she likes to imagine, anyway.

But it is hard to let the imagination run afire when the recordings are of such low resolution. There has yet to be a metacortex successfully recovered from victims of the attacks; the Fugues, in their wisdom, make sure to disintegrate the CNS of every sapient organism they encounter. Those unfortunate enough to be captured for ransom are returned blinking, frowning, staring at a yawning gap in their memory that extends to just before their capture.

She wants to look one in the eyes. Straight dead into those fiery, dodecachromatic eyes. Two, four, six, eight—she doesn't care.

She wants to kill one.

Every day she trains for it. Every night she straps herself into the medbay reconstructor and feels her muscle and sinew and bone bind itself back together without anesthesia. She is the first in queue for chemical therapy, gene therapy, anything that will polish her edge even an iota more.

She wants to kill one so badly she stays up at night dwelling on how she would kill one. Her fingernails ache. Her teeth ache. She has to shave her head every week to stay snug in her helmet—her cells divide so quickly, now.

With her linegun, maybe. Yes, a perfect dead ringer of a shot. Or her knife—she would go arcblade to tacscythe, edge to edge, and with a flourish, strike the pirate commando dead where it stood. The battle would cease and all would see.

She dreams of that often.

* * *

Her first Fugue kill is sweeter than she could have ever dreamed.

The glittering tongue of antihydrogen lashes out brightly and snaps a bite out the armor. And another, and another, and another, until its blinding fangs crack through. The linegun is silent, having eaten its fill.

The pirate falls-slowly, its ganglion still defying the evident-its exposed flesh glistening, hemolymph bubbling and frothing to a slowing rhythm. It knows it's dying. From the day it emerged from its egg clutch with its siblings in tow, it knew that all organisms must die and it was no different.

It looks at her, compound eyes switching in and out of focus. It is a harsh appraisal, she thinks. Contempt and disgust, as if she were a microbial growth in a laboratory.

The last thing it sees are the many teeth of her smile.


	2. The Line Where Sky Meets Water

The name 'Nona' is one of those things that just happened.

When they were first discovered by the Federation, an intelligence officer inputted "NONAME" in lieu of a proper taxonomical term. That was something for the scientists to dwell on.

They aren't roundworms, or flatworms, or worms at all. They aren't exactly plants or animals, either.

They don't talk in a frequency humans can hear. Infrasound, ultrasound. Temperature, pheromones. So, with a little technological assistance, they just beam their speech directly into the human temporal lobe. Unpleasant at first—like you have two voices in your head instead of the usual one-but you get used to it.

But they're friendly for now, so that's what counts.

* * *

The Nona and the Fugue go way back.

In human terms, anyway. To the Nona, humanity and the Fugue essentially appeared one after the other. At that point, they expected more species to arrive. Carve a tunnel and life arrives, so goes one of their more comprehensible idioms.

The Fugue landed, picking up their energy signatures, and aimed to pillage. The Nona were confused for about the breadth of a moment before they started fighting back. Both sides incurring heavy losses—neither had any understanding of the others' morphology. A Fugue would bifurcate a Nona only to be constricted to death by both halves. A Nona would strike a Fugue's neuraxis only to find that it had no effect.

The second time to Fugue landed, they asked for the Nona to join them. They were apt warriors, clearly.

The Nona said they would consider it.

A century later the Fugue attacked again. The Nona surmised that they had dwelt on the issue too long. The embassy they were building for the Fugue lies incomplete.

There was an apocryphal story that went like this:

When the humans and the Nona first met, and before true communications were established, some of the first scouts started calling the Nona 'phalloids.' Amongst the infantry, the name stuck.

The Nona are very, very observant.

One day, at a Federation conference, the Nona ambassador politely drew the human ambassador aside with a swish of a dorsal segment. "If it is within my proper channel to query: what is the root-origin of the term 'phalloid?'"

The human ambassador was sweating himself into dessiccation. If he answered this wrong, he risked humanity being expelled from the Federation at best. At worst, war with a space-faring species of massive worms.

So he stuttered out, "Penis."

The Nona ambassador looked at him, nodded politely (nods are seen as very clumsy by the Nona), and gently touched the human's shoulder with his tail. "Glory and honor to be named after a sacred human organ," it had said with gravity.

At first, it was kind of amusing. Then a contingent of friendlier-than-usual Nonas starting greeting humans by asking "How fares your penis?" and then the command put an end to that.

* * *

The-River-Runs-Red-Like-Warm-Blood.

He chose the name out of kindness. He studied the way blood moved through the arteries and veins of humans, and thought, "what better way to show our guests that I mean well than to name myself after one of their vital functions?"

He shifted his carapace to a deep red.

It didn't go over well amongst the humans. But Skótos understood.

She sees River undulate his way to her through the bodies occupying the bar—with some caution, as he has determined that bipeds (well, humans) do not appreciate having their legs used as gateways. He coils at her feet and rises up to face level, swaying slightly.

"Acknowledgement and vitality and love," he says, flexing his mandibles and forcipules in the approximation of a human handwave.

Skótos leans forward and kisses him on the crestplate of his scolex. "Happy to see you, too."

River looks further down at Skótos, head yawing and rolling. "Vacuous... digestive organ-system, inadequate hydration... Metabolism rate suboptimal." He looks up, a single mandible-piece cocked. "Subsume nutrient-solids?"

"Consume," she corrects gently.

"... Consume," he repeats, the word humming up and down his carapace so slowly one could mistake it for mockery. "Yes. Consume. Evident, obvious." He nods to himself, satisfied. "Consume nutrient-solids?"

"Not tonight," she says, striding past him and aiming for a deserted corner at the far end of the bar. She hasn't had a drink in two solars. She deserves this.

"... Consume neurotoxin?" It's harder to tell without watching his body language, but River sounds concerned.

"You worry too much. This is how humans celebrate, remember? One of the few true markers of our civilization." She mounts a stool before River can point out that, _actually,_ humans have only been synthesizing ethanol for less than a tenth of their existence, and points two fingers at the one of the bartenders. River spirals around the stool next to her.

"Ritual, celebrate..." River mutters to himself (not that a Nona can truly do so), but lets the matter lie. "New topic: promotion! Skill, bravery, swiftness, strength—"

"That's enough adjectives for one night."

"—All made clear. Seeking, hunting, killing of hostile biped. Difficult task accomplished."

Her drink slides across the glowing, lambent countertop. She looks down at it. Imagine it overflows with Fugue blood instead. She smiles. "You say that like you were worried about me."

"Yes."

A pause. "Concern dismissed. Replaced with... pride." The Nona can lie more easier than humans tell the truth, but River is a particularly bad liar.

"Have a little faith." Skótos shakes her head, and drinks. She shudders slightly.

"... Pride still present. Faith, determinant."


End file.
